The bandage kept slipping.
I'd been at it for ten minutes, sitting on the edge of my bed with the roll of gauze in my lap and my burned hand held out in front of me like it belonged to someone else. The blisters had risen fully now — three of them, fat and tight across my knuckles, the skin around them an angry, mottled red that faded into the older scar tissue at my palm. Every time I tried to wrap it, my fingers wouldn't cooperate. Too stiff. Too swollen. The gauze would catch and I'd have to start over, and each time I started over the pain reset itself like it had somewhere to be.
I was so focused on the bandage that it took me a full minute to register what was missing.
My hand went to my throat.
Nothing.
I sat very still. Then I was on my feet, checking the nightstand, the floor, the folds of my shirt — already knowing. Already knowing exactly where it was and exactly who had it. The knowing sat in my stomach like a stone.
I found Stella in the east corridor, near the back stairwell. She was alone, which meant she had been waiting.
She turned when she heard me coming, and the smile she gave me was different from the ones she wore in front of Kingsley. No warmth in it. No performance. Just the real thing underneath, finally allowed out.
"Looking for something?" she said.
"Give it back."
She tilted her head. "Give what back?"
"Stella."
She reached into the pocket of her cardigan and held it up — my father's necklace, the bullet shell catching the dim corridor light, the chain dangling from her fingers like it was nothing. Like it was a piece of junk she'd found on the floor.
"This?" She turned it slowly. "It's not much to look at."
"It was my father's."
"I know." She said it simply, without cruelty, which was somehow worse. "That's why I took it."
I took a step toward her. She didn't move back.
"You should be careful," she said, her voice dropping to something quieter, more deliberate. "That hand looks bad. You wouldn't want to make it worse." Her eyes moved to my bandaged hand and stayed there for a moment before coming back to my face. "You know what I think, Mackenzie? I think you've been here too long. I think you've gotten comfortable. And I think it's time for you to understand that everything you have in this pack — your rank, your room, your little routines — all of it exists because Kingsley allows it. And Kingsley listens to me."
She tucked the necklace back into her pocket.
"I'm going to take it all," she said pleasantly. "Slowly. So you feel every piece of it. And when there's nothing left, you'll leave on your own, or you won't leave at all." She smiled again — that real smile, the one with no warmth in it. "Either way works for me."
She walked past me without another word. Her perfume lingered in the corridor long after she was gone.
I stood there for a moment. Then I went back to my room and finished wrapping my hand.
---
I heard he'd arrived under the cover of a trade discussion — something about territorial boundaries and supply routes, the kind of administrative errand that Betas handled without much fanfare. I didn't know what he looked like. I only knew his name, and that my mother trusted him, and that he was here.
He found me near the tree line at the edge of the eastern woods, just after dark. I'd gone out for air — or that's what I told myself. Really I think some part of me already knew.
He was taller than I expected. Quiet in the way that some people are quiet — not because they have nothing to say, but because they've learned that most situations don't require them to fill the silence. He looked at my bandaged hand once, briefly, and didn't comment on it.
"Your mother sends these," he said, and held out a small cloth pouch. Inside were three sealed jars — high-grade healing salve, the kind my mother made herself, the kind that smelled faintly of pine and something medicinal I'd never been able to name. "She said to use the one with the blue lid first."
I took the pouch. My throat felt tight.
"She also said to tell you," he continued, his voice low and even, "that you've waited long enough."
I looked up at him. He met my eyes without pressure, without expectation — just steady, like he had all the time in the world and no agenda attached to any of it.
"Three days," he said. "Can you hold on for three more days?"
I thought about the necklace in Stella's pocket. I thought about the corridor, and the smile, and everything she'd promised to take.
"Yes," I said.
He nodded once. "Then I'll be here."
He slipped back into the tree line without another word, and I stood at the edge of the woods with the pouch in my good hand and the night air cold against my face, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, the thing in my chest that had been bracing itself went very slightly, carefully still.
Three days.
